Kamal Davar | Strict watch on the challenge of ‘Khalistan’ is vital in Punjab

Some weeks ago, former Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, undergoing religious penance at the holy Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar’s Golden Temple, survived an assassination attempt on his life when a former ageing “Khalistan” terrorist, Narain Singh Chaura, fired at him. It must also be accepted by our political and security establishment that there has been, in recent years, a discernible rise in sympathy for the “Khalistan” secessionist movement among India’s Sikh diaspora with some support from the governments of Canada, and to a lesser extent from that of the United States and Britain. What is amply clear is that Pakistan’s ISI appears to have revived its “K2” strategy, which was pioneered by military dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in the early 1980s when he realised it was impossible to otherwise wrest Jammu and Kashmir from India and foment a credible separatist movement in India’s Punjab. A simmering “Khalistan” emergence abroad exists -- for the time being – and thus it will be prudent for India’s security and intelligence establishment to keep a strict watch inside Punjab for India cannot afford to have a re-enactment of the conditions in India’s crown jewel state of Punjab as had taken place in the mid-1980s.